On June 9 the U.S. House passed the Mandatory Price Reporting (MPR) Act of 2015 (H.R. 2051) by voice vote. MPR is scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, and the bill extends MPR for beef, swine, and sheep/lambs through September 2020. MPR is set to expire on Sept. 30. It includes some modifications to the swine and lamb provisions.
The bill is awaiting consideration in the Senate Ag Committee.
For hogs, the bill adds a new category for "negotiated formula purchase," which consists of transactions for delivery within 14 days on which the price is not fixed at the time the hogs are committed to the packer. The bill also modifies the daily morning price report to include any transactions that take place after the 1:30 pm deadline on the previous day. The changes will improve the precision of hog price reports and should help capture some transactions currently not making it into the daily reports. Both of these changes are broadly supported within the industry.
For lamb, the bill lowers the size threshold for automatic inclusion in MPR requirements for importers and packers. This should bring additional transactions into the current reports.
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